The Fugitive Kind (Sidney Lumet, 1960)

I saw this eons ago and thought it lacked the fire of the more storied Tennessee Williams film adaptations. Seen recently, it gives off the sickeningly sweet stench of my favorite genre, the film maudit. Anna Magnani plays Lady Torrance, a role originated by Maureen Stapleton on Broadway under the title Orpheus Descending who, in a smaller role here, seems shipped in from a more even-keeled film. Magnani doesn't disguise her accent as the owner of a rundown shop in Mississippi so she comes across as much of an outsider as hunky, moody drifter Valentine "Snakeskin" Xavier (Marlon Brando) who improbably falls for Lady. Not much happens. Lady Torrance's big goal is to open a "ladies confectionery" (aka ice cream shop) in the back of her store. And...that's kind of it. Any narrative beats are mere nodes around which the principals brood and seethe. And if you can figure out what on earth Joanne Woodward is doing in this thing, you're one up on me. As the "libertine" (or so Wiki says) Carol Cutrere, she sports Cleopatra eyeliner and a raincoat, playing someone who just might have returned from an afternoon sexploitation screening. She hangs with Uncle Pleasant, the Conjure Man (Emory Richardson), a black man with wild white hair whose gentle manner suggests he's figured out how to live with his outsider status. It all ends grandiloquently with Lady Torrance ecstatic underneath the flower orgy of her confectionery moments before her jealous, bed-ridden husband Jabe (Victor Jory) torches it to the ground. It's no surprise to learn that in 1994, the source material was turned into a two-act opera by Bruce Saylor and J.D. McClatchy. Bosley Crowther, of all people, nailed the film's agitated, scratchy vibe when he wrote that Lumet's "out-right audacity in pacing his film at a morbid tempo that lets time drag and passions slowly shape [is] responsible for much of the insistence and the mesmeric quality that emerge." The Fugitive Kind was so compelling this time around that I'm clearly overdue to rewatch another Lumet Williams adaptation that left me cold, Last of the Mobile Hot Shots (1970). How did these projects get greenlit?

Grade: A-minus

Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop compilation/playlist

In 2013, Saint Etienne maestro/ace compiler Bob Stanley published Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop, a 747-page tome surveying pop from Billy Haley to Beyoncé, to borrow the subtitle from the American edition. I read the longer Brit version on my Kindle the moment it came out and intended to make a compilation/playlist of the dozens of songs I highlighted. Then my Kindle broke and I put the project aside until I had time to peer through a half-darkened screen to retrieve my highlights. That snowy night in front of the fire has finally arrived. 

There are some Yeah Yeah Yeah playlists on Spotify. But those are unwieldy beasts totaling thousands of songs in at least one instance. And because Stanley really does write about popular music, that means tracks you know over under sideways down by Elvis, Beatles, and the Rolling Stones lard up the playlists. My condensation below is unwieldy enough - 146 songs running just under eight hours. But the benefit here is that it's comprised almost entirely of songs I'd never heard. And if like me you didn't grow up alongside Stanley in England, you'll share most of these deafspots.

Before it's even a British book, Yeah Yeah Yeah is a messy one which suits its subject matter. Stanley rattles off fave raves like a sugar-high tween and has wedged in witty one-liners in every remaining cranny (on Pink Floyd replacing Syd Barrett with old friend David Gilmour: "Things were so bad, they almost talked to each other about it.") So his Brit slant doesn't bother me. He's put tons of music into my ears and convinced me that I've been underrating skiffle, Joe Meek, and Tommy Steele, of all people. And he's the first critic on the planet to say even the remotest kind word about Mantovani so he's got my attention.

I haven't had a chance to become intimate with each track below. But while I tried to eliminate outright airdales (e.g., Robin Gibb's unlistenable "Moon Anthem"), I don't expect each song to blow me away. Some were included for historical significance (Robin Gibb again reportedly with the first hit record to use a drum machine) or because it taught me something about reggae (Nina Simone and Rosco Gordon, together at last) or because it tripped out Marc Almond (a Cure deep cut so slinky that I'm afraid I'll be disappointed by the album surrounding it). But a few have indeed already blown me away. Barry Ryan's "Kitsch" sounds like a Scott Walker who doesn't take himself so damn seriously. Ray Pollard's "The Drifter" is a heavy-hearted, Northern soul masterpiece currently going for $1,199.99 on Discogs and is worth thrice that. Billy Fury's "I'm Lost Without You" makes me understand why John Lennon asked for his autograph. Vince Taylor was an absolutely astonishing performer (check out his wiggles here) and I now understand why David Bowie (and presumably The Clash) were obsessed with him. The Ace of Cup's "Glue" is proto-Sleater-Kinney. And that can't really be The Supremes singing about "Buttered Popcorn," can it?!?

Each track is an mp3 in glorious 320. A link to a zip file of them all is below at the Kim Roberts entry, a Joe Meek b-side not mentioned by Stanley but too irritating not to include amongst the Meek productions I now love ("Eyes"!). I don't do or even get Spotify but feel free to recreate this playlist there. The tracks appear in the order that Stanley discusses them in the book so that a 1950s cut will appear in a new wave chapter. Enjoy the sprawl!

Peanuts Wilson:    "Cast Iron Arm"
Beach Boys:    "Carry Me Home"
Max Bygraves:    "Cowpuncher's Cantata"
Al Martino:    "Rachel"
Whitfield, David:    "Cara Mia (with The Mantovani Orchestra)"
Jo Stafford:    "You Belong to Me"
Frankie Laine:    "Blowing Wild"
Mantovani:    "Moulin Rogue"
Dickie Valentine:    "Finger of Suspicion"
The Ames Brothers:   "Rag Mop"
The Johnny Burnette Trio:    "The Train Kept A-Rollin'"
Pat Boone:    "I'll Be Home"
Frankie Laine:    "Hey! Joe"
The Everly Brothers:    "Temptation (Single Version)"
The Everly Brothers:    "Nancy's Minuet"
Jack Scott:    "Goodbye Baby"
Jimmy Miller & His Barbecues:    "Sizzling Hot"
Lonnie Donegan:    "Cumberland Gap"
Lonnie Donegan:    "Gamblin' Man"
Jimmy Young:    "Chain Gang"
Tommy Steele:    "Rock With The Caveman"
Billy Fury: "I'm Lost Without You"
Vince Taylor & The Playboys:    "Brand New Cadillac"
Johnny Kidd & The Pirates:    "Shakin' All Over"
Metallics:    "Need Your Love"
Paul Anka:    "Crazy Love"
Gene Pitney:    "Billy You're My Friend"
The Aquatones:    "You"
John Leyton:    "Johnny Remember Me"
The Moontrekkers:    "Night Of The Vampire"
The Honeycombs:    "Eyes"
Buzz:   "You're Holding Me Down"
Kim Roberts:    "For Loving Me This Way"
Paul Hampton:    "Two Hour Honeymoon"
Judy Henske:    "Road To Nowhere"
Ray Pollard:    "The Drifter"
The Mojos:    "Everything's Alright"
Gene Pitney:    "That Girl Belongs To Yesterday"
Barbara Lewis:    "Hello Stranger"
Dee Dee Sharp:    "I Really Love You"
Gladys Knight & The Pips:    "Giving Up (Mono)"
Gladys Knight & The Pips:    "Baby Don't Change Your Mind"
Barbara Lewis:    "Baby I'm Yours"
The Marvelettes:    "When You're Young And In Love"
Jackie Wilson:    "I Get The Sweetest Feeling"
Aretha Franklin:    "Sweet Bitter Love"
Little Esther Phillips:    "Some Things You Never Get Used To"
Irma Thomas:    "It's Starting to Get to Me Now"
Teri Thornton:    "Why Don't You Love Me"
The Ad Libs:    "Giving Up"
Judy Clay:    "Haven't Got What It Takes"
The Sweet Things:    "You're My Lovin' Baby"
Gary Lewis & The Playboys:    "Jill"
Turtles, The:    "Grim Reaper Of Love"
Chob:    "We're Pretty Quick"
The Jelly Bean Bandits:    "Generation"
The Supremes:    "Buttered Popcorn (Stereo Version)"
Little Iva & Her Band:    "Continental Strut"
Mary Wells:    "Bye Bye Baby"
Chris Clark:   "I Just Wanna Be Lovin' You"
Barbara Mcnair:   "Baby A Go-Go"
Brenda Holloway:    "Lonely Boy"
Kim Weston:    "Absent Minded Lover"
The Fairytale:    "Guess I Was Dreaming"
The Ace Of Cups:    "Glue"
Barry Ryan:    "Eloise"
Barry Ryan:    "Kitsch"
Honeybus:    "I Can't Let Maggie Go"
Dorothy Moore:    "Misty Blue"
George Perkins and the Silver Stars:    "Crying in the Streets"
Timmy Willis:    "Easy As Saying 1-2-3"
Doris Allen:    "A Shell of a Woman"
Billy Joe Young:    "I Had My Heart Set On You"
Betty Green:    "He's Down On Me"
Nelson Sanders:    "Tired Of Being Your Fool"
James Carr:    "The Dark End of the Street"
O.V. Wright With The Keys:    "That's How Strong My Love Is"
Betty Harris:    "What Did I Do Wrong..."
Irma Thomas:    "Wish Someone Would Care"
Irma Thomas:    "Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand)"
Diana Ross:    "I'm Still Waiting"
Thunderclap Newman:    "Something In The Air"
Fresh Air:    "Running Wild"
Fleetwood Mac:    "Man Of The World"
Robin Gibb:    "Saved By The Bell"
Mungo Jerry:    "Baby Jump"
White Plains:    "When You Are A King"
Elton John:    "Young, Gifted & Black"
Tony Burrows:    "Melanie Makes Me Smile"
Tony Burrows:    "Every Little Move She Makes"
Davy Graham:    "Anji"
Lindisfarne:    "Lady Eleanor (Single Version)"
John Cale:    "I Keep a Close Watch"
Keith Christmas:    "Forest And The Shore"
Theophilus Beckford:    "Easy Snappin'"
Johnny Nash:    "Hold Me Tight"
Nina Simone:    "My Baby Just Cares for Me"
Fats Domino:    "Be My Guest"
Rosco Gordon:    "T-Model Boogie"
Rosco Gordon:    "Just a Little Bit"
Marc Bolan:    "Hippy Gumbo"
Stavely Makepeace:    "(I Wanna Love You Like A) Mad Dog"
Lieutenant Pigeon:    "Mouldy Old Dough"
Wizzard:    "Angel Fingers"
Cockney Rebel:    "Sebastian"
The Drew-vells:    "Tell Him"
Baby Dolls:    "Don't Rush Me"
The Three Degrees:    "Collage"
The Chi-Lites:    "You Don't Have To Go"
David Essex:    "City Lights"
David Essex:    "Me And My Girl (Night-Clubbing)"
Bay City Rollers: "Just A Little Love"
Darren Burn:    "Summertime Time"
Barbara Mills:    "Queen Of Fools"
Bobbie Smith:    "Walk On Into My Heart"
Cliff Richard:    "Miss You Nights"
Spunky Spider:    "You Won't Come"
Kipper:    "The Clapham"
The Good Missionaries:    "Keep Going Backwards"
The Good Missionaries:    "Attitudes"
The Regents:   "7Teen"
The Leyton Buzzards:    "Saturday Night Beneath The Plastic Palm Tree"
Tonight:    "Drummer Man"
Donna McGhee:    "Do As I Do (Original 12" Mix)"
Bee Gees:    "Until"
Frank Chacksfield & His Orchestra:    "Little Red Monkey"
Kim Wilde:    "Cambodia (Single Version)"
David Bowie:    "It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City"
The Dreamweavers:    "It's Almost Tomorrow"
Josef K:    "Chance Meeting"
Brother Beyond:    "The Harder I Try"
Beggar & Co.:    "(Somebody) Help Me Out (12-inch Version)"
The Cure:    "All Cats Are Grey"
Mixmaster:    "Grand Piano"
Starlight:    "Numero Uno (Club Mix)"
Gino Latino:    "Welcome (Radio Version)"
FPI Project Feat. Sharon Dee Clarke:    "Going Back to My Roots (Vocal Version)"
Primal Scream:    "Higher Than The Sun"
Sydney Youngblood:    "If Only I Could"
World Of Twist:   "Sons Of The Stage"
Schoolly D:    "PSK (What Does It Mean)"
Shut Up & Dance:    "5678 (Original Mix)"
Shut Up And Dance:    "£10 To Get In"
Shut Up And Dance:    "Raving I'm Raving feat. Peter Bouncer"
Red Light:    "The Burial"
The Style Council:    "Promised Land"

West Side Story (Steven Spielberg, 2021)

For the first ten or so minutes, Steven Spielberg's West Side Story remake feels like a tomb opened up for the reanimated corpse of Robert Wise's 1961 film adaptation to pirouette onto 2021 screens. You ask yourself, "why this again? why now?" Soon, though, I was sucked in by the incomparable score. And by the time Tony (an underrated Ansel Elgort) lets forth with "Maria," I was blubbering. Spielberg injects some jokey moments into the number such as neighbors slamming their windows shut. But the man means no disrespect to the genre as evinced by the irresistible shot in which Tony looks heavenward while a pool of lights reflected in pissy street ponds twinkle around him, quite possibly the loveliest moment in Spielberg's oeuvre. Thanks to Spielberg's commitment, I now hear "Maria" as an apotheosis of American musical theatre and wonder if Stephen Sondheim ever composed a couplet as divine as "Say it loud and there's music playing/Say it soft as it's almost like praying."

And so it goes. Rachel Zegler as Maria, Ariana DeBose as Anita, David Alvarez as Bernardo, Mike Faist as Riff, and, yes Elgort all acquit themselves admirably and then some. The mambo at the dance gave me the chills (but then again, it always does). "Tonight" is performed largely through an illegally locked fire escape grate. Tony tells Maria that she should get the landlord to fix that, a specific more heart-warmingly New Yawk than an opened-out "America" featuring a protest against Robert Moses. "Cool" makes more sense here as a rift between Tony and Riff rather than as a time killer in the 1961 film. And giving "Somewhere" to Valentina, the new character to replace/beef up the role of Doc, is a stroke performed by Rita Moreno as a more generalized plea for transcendence. My heart was heavy. The 156 minutes whizz by. I loved it.

But...what does it all mean? Now that we know what a West Side Story film would be like with actual Latin actors in the roles of Maria and Bernardo (and an Anita with no brown face), what's next? Does this augur a Hollywood with not only more work for Zegler, DeBose, and Alvarez, but more culturally specific stories as well? Anbodys is now a trans guy (played by non-binary actor Iris Menes) who protests the Jets' marking him as female. When he wins them over by informing them that Chino (Josh Andrés Rivera) has a gun and is looking to shoot Tony, one of the Jets praises him with a preposterous "You've done good, buddy boy." Even though I found this as groan-inducing as any of Tarantino's historical revisions, I applaud this moment of acceptance if it makes a trans viewer feel mighty real. But as Peggy Lee (and Cristina) once asked, is that all there is? A sprinkling of Representation Matters into a proven property?

Judging from the premature obituaries for the film's "underperformance" at the box office, that apparently is all there is, at least at the tentpole level. But there are (coughs) alternatives. I saw West Side Story after spending a weekend with two hideous, offensive films - Single All the Way and The Bitch Who Stole Christmas, the former Netflix's go at a gay Hallmark Christmas movie, the latter a feature-length version of one of those DOA musical numbers on RuPaul's Drag Race. Both function as what Kristen Warner calls "plastic representation" - a box-checking quantifiable difference that "overdetermines the benchmarks of progress and obscures the multifaceted challenges inherent in booking roles as well as securing work on writing staffs, directing gigs, or even reaching executive gatekeeper status—thus privileging the visible (actors) over all other cinematic and televisual functions." If Single All the Way and The Bitch Who Stole Christmas are "gay films," I'll stick with my "perverse" and "naive" readings of the queerness in select Joan Crawford and Franklin Pangborn titles. But I left West Side Story with plasticity on the mind. Is it a trans film now or even a Latin one? Could it ever be?

 Grade: A-minus

Belfast (Kenneth Branagh, 2021)

I expected something dull and prestigious and got laughably awful instead. Kenneth Branagh's semi-autobiographical account of his upbringing in Belfast is the Soccer Mummy of war-seen-through-the-eyes-of-a-child films. It takes place during the Troubles which you hear about mostly via the telly. But because Branagh locks into all the corny beats of the genre so rigidly, the conflict could be the Vietnam War, WWII, the Hundred Years' War. Check off all the hallmarks as they pass before you. Black and white to show he means it, man. Color travelogue shots of Eire. Van Morrison choking the soundtrack. Young boy gaining confidence with a girl (how else are we to know when the film is coming to an end?). Grandma and grandpa dancing to the songs of old. Shoplifting as first ritual into adulthood. The nadir comes during the climactic stand off between the lead local rioter and lead dad Jamie Dornan scored to the Tex Ritter theme for High Noon which the family were watching on the telly earlier on. Or was the nadir Dornan's out-of-nowhere karaoke performance of "Everlasting Love"? 

Grade: D

Vincente Minnelli's Best Picture Oscar Winners

Allow me to preface this post by stating that 1. Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1944) is my vote for the greatest film of the 1940s. 2. Minnelli is in the Pantheon of the greatest classical Hollywood directors. 3. The musical is my favorite Hollywood genre. Thus, I feel confident to proclaim both An American in Paris (1951) and Gigi (1958) as minor Minnelli at best. In this I have some august support. James Naremore, in his 1993 book The Films of Vincente Minnelli, confesses that both leave him "relatively cold. Despite a great many incidental virtues, the first of these films is a somewhat leaden spectacular , and the second strikes me as a patently sexist fantasy about 'little girls''" (5). And in The American Cinema, Andrew Sarris does not italicize Gigi in his Minnelli entry which means the film does not "represent [one of] the highlights of a director's career" (17). 

A key to the problem with An American in Paris occurs in the Beaux Arts Ball scene, a Sternbergian spectacle raging around the (temporary) deformation of the heterosexual couple of Lise (Leslie Caron) and Jerry (Gene Kelly). In her BFI monograph on the film, Sue Harris appears crestfallen about the Ball because it "unsettles the generic stability for which [the film] seemed destined" (85). But that just means the film has reached its hysterical moment where music and mise-en-scène become heightened to reveal what the realist representation and the story cannot. Here, the film finally becomes as queer as it wants to be with Minnelli's exquisite decoration rising to the surface, threatening to engulf the rote heterosexuality in an orgy of flailing bodies and queer couplings. Notice the man leading his shirtless, betutued boyfriend through the crowd.

The problem is that the Ball doesn't occur until almost 90 minutes into the film. Before then, An American in Paris trudges along its destined path with far too much generic stability. To be blunt, I only need the Beaux Arts scene and the justly famous dream ballet. But I could settle for the rest if Hank's (Georges Guétary in his only Hollywood film, unsurprisingly) "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise" and Adam's (Oscar Levant, always terrific) dream symphony "Concerto in F" and maybe Jerry's cutesy "I Got Rhythm" were excised, all pointless and/or saccharine moments that make my teeth hurt. But that's the blessing and the curse of the musical. Even (especially!) at its best, the genre traffics in an indifference to wholeness. That Minnelli pulled off two great scenes is blessing enough. In short, I'll take the 17-minute dream ballet over the other nominees for Best Picture that year in their entireties save for A Streetcar Named Desire. 

I'd lob Naremore's leaden complaint more against Gigi at least in its first half. Minnelli's camera feels weighted down in that 1950s Oscar way. All the better to show off the absolutely gorgeous décor, I know. But it makes for a rather elephantine watch until Gigi (Little Edie Bouvier fave Leslie Caron) starts to self-actualize, at which point, to borrow Joe McElhaney's words from The Death of Classical Cinema, Minnelli gives "a sense that his characters are actively engaging with the decor of their homes and work spaces rather than simply being determined by it" (152). The increasingly analytical editing and elegant tracking shots drain some of the stifling prestige out of the project and overall, Gigi generates more dramatic kineticism than An American in Paris, with more highs too, especially the simple, exquisite "I Remember It Well" sung by Maurice Chevalier and the great Hermione Gingold. But both films peter out at the end. Gaston's (Louis Jourdan) nighttime return to the place where he sang the title song signals his commitment to Gigi as his wife rather than his courtesan. But the scene feels sloppy and rushed as if Minnelli was itchy to wrap things up, a sensible impulse as the film approaches the two-hour mark but hardly worth the running time. 

So the director of Cabin in the Sky and The Clock and Yolanda and the Thief and The Pirate and The Bad and the Beautiful and The Long, Long Trailer and The Cobweb and Tea and Sympathy and Some Came Running and Home from the Hill and Two Weeks in Another Town and A Matter of Time came up short now and then. Big deal.

An American in Paris: B

Gigi: a carefully hedged A-minus